In hospitals and other health care environments, it is often necessary to continuously collect and analyze a variety of medical data from a patient. These data may include electrocardiogram, temperature, blood pressure, respiration, pulse and other parameters.
Patient monitoring systems have typically fallen into one of two general categories: multi-function monitoring, recording and displaying systems which process and collect all of the data desired, but are bulky and difficult to transport; and small, portable systems which are easy to transport, but process and collect fewer types of data and have limited storage capability. Initially (e.g., in an ambulance or an emergency room) a patient is connected to a simple, portable monitor to observe a limited number of medical attributes, such as EKG or non-invasive blood pressure. As the patient moves to higher care facilities (e.g., an intensive care unit or operating room) it is desirable to augment these simple monitors to observe additional parameters. Generally, this is accomplished by disconnecting the patient from the simple monitor and connecting the patient to a monitoring system having more robust capabilities.
The need for continuity of data collection and display is most pressing in emergency situations. During an emergency, the speed at which a patient is transferred from a bed to an operating room or intensive care unit may substantially impact the patient's chance of survival. It is important to provide the same level of monitoring in transport as at the stationary bedside. It is desirable from a clinical point of view to provide a continuous monitoring capability and data history availability which follows the patient.
Two major considerations in the design of transport monitoring systems are the ease and speed of system reconfiguration. It is undesirable to disconnect from the patient a set of sensors coupled to a fixed location monitoring system, and then attach a new set of sensors coupled to a portable monitor immediately prior to transportation or administration of critical procedures. It is equally undesirable to switch monitoring systems, from a fixed location monitoring system to a portable monitoring system for transport, due to disconnection/reconnect of the individual sensors.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,604, titled TRANSPORTABLE MODULAR PATIENT MONITOR, assigned to the same Assignee as the present invention, describes a transportable patient monitoring system of the type including a docking station which both physically and electrically supports a transportable patient monitor.
Although the system described in the '604 patent is a vast improvement over the prior art, further improvement is desirable. In this regard, it is noted that patient care areas are geographically distributed throughout hospitals or other health care facilities. Traditionally each of these areas is equipped with a patient monitor having fixed set-ups, e.g., a fixed configuration (or set of configurations) in accordance with the users preference, and a fixed set of software applications. Examples of configuration items include physiological alarm limits, display screen layouts (such as waveform display priority, waveform size, display speed and brightness, etc) and speaker volume. Examples of software applications include: recall & edit of arrhythmia waveforms, remote view of other patient monitors and graphical calculators of hemodynamic parameters. Recently, portable monitoring systems are becoming more popular. However, these systems also have fixed configurations and use a fixed set of software applications.
While each area may be able and willing to use the same type of patient monitor, each typically has different set-up needs; the way that its monitors are configured and the types of software applications that they run. For example, an Operating Room (OR) may need a monitor with very bright display settings and a software application which analyzes cardiac arrhythmias. An Intensive Care Unit (ICU) may not need Arrhythmia analysis, but may need a software application to calculate drug dosages. In addition, the ICU may wish that its monitors be configured with low display intensity and have a different waveform priority.
It is desirable to have a patient monitoring system in which portable patient monitors can have variable set-ups, with variable monitor configuration and a variable set of software applications that can be run whenever the monitor is moved from one patient care area to another.
It would be desirable for such variable set-ups to easily occur when the monitor is moved from one patient monitoring area to another. Automatic reconfiguration of the monitor set-ups as defined at the new area would also be desirable.
It is an object of the present invention to provide such a reconfigurable portable patient monitoring system.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide such a reconfigurable portable patient monitoring system wherein the steps required to reconfigure the system can be easily, quickly, and reliably performed, in order to reduce what can often be very precious time needed to prepare the patient and monitoring system for transport to an operating room or intensive care unit.